During his performance with the High Flying Birds on Jools Holland last week, the former Oasis guitarist had a member of his live band playing a pair of scissors.

The incident went viral online, with brother Liam responding at the time by tweeting that he had “somebody sharpening a pencil” in his band. Liam then appeared to mock Noel when he had someone peeling a potato at one of his own gigs.

Now, speaking to i-D, Noel has said of his scissors-playing bandmate: “She’s French and she’s eccentric to say the least. I said to her, ‘can you play the tambourine?’, She said, ‘I cannot play the tambourine.’ I said, ‘Oh right. Shaker?’ ‘Non. I can play the scissors.’ She brought them in and I was looking at my bass player going, if that’s not the greatest thing you’ve ever seen then tell me what is. A French bird in a cape playing the scissors? It doesn’t get any better than that does it?”

“If you were from Peckham, you would be obliged to intellectualise it,” he added. “You would be at the mercy of intellectualising it.”

Noel continued: “Look, I know what I’m doing. I’m not about to get on stage and play an arena with a bird in a cape playing the scissors, unless it’s great. I’m not a fucking idiot.”

Of his new album, he said: “The record will stand up. I have no doubts about that. I’ve listened to it enough, I know what it is. It’s a great record. And it’s a great rock and roll record and I’ll tell you why. I go round the world and I do interviews a lot, and the term ‘rock and roll’ is banded about usually 40 times a week. And a lot of people, I find, have a pretty weird idea of what rock and roll is. It’s usually the leather jacket and the shades and the booze and the cigs and all that. For me, it’s freedom to do what the fucking hell you want. I’m not owned by anybody. I’m not owned by the whims of a fan base or the bank balance of a record company. I do what I want when I want to do it. And I live and die by the consequences. It’s only a record man. I’ll make another one in a few years. That one might be worse.”